To date, maintenance systems, such as those described by the U.S. Pat. No. 7,714,705, which is incorporated herein fully by this reference, have been based from a central server, which is ingesting both weather information received from a weather service provider (“WSP”), such as the National Weather Service (“NWS”) and weather and maintenance information received from maintenance vehicles and remotely located sensors and sensor arrays, processing the ingested information, and attempting to provide recommendations to snow and ice maintenance vehicles in the field. The recommendations are commonly based on anticipated conditions and the last information the AVL server received from the vehicles and sensors and sensor arrays.
In one application, weather information is typically ingested from the NWS and other sources into a central server controlled by a meteorological service provider (the meteorologist's central server or “MCS”). The weather information typically includes various reporting types ranging from data from weather stations to visual observations. The MCS also ingests data from the field as last reported by maintenance vehicle operators and/or from assumptions within the system (e.g., one or more of the following: location, lane, weather condition, road condition, ambient and surface temperatures, blade and/or other vehicular or engine information, wind directions and speeds, etc.). Data is typically processed by the MCS system on a periodic basis (e.g., every 1-20 minutes with some direct and indirect data being updated even less frequently). Meteorologists and/or systems review the data and try to establish from the historic record what has been done, predict what field operators should be seeing and expecting, and create forecasts and recommendations for what they should do, and then send applicable information back out to the field.
The system can have problems. For example, one problem with the current system is that operators, when out of communication with the central server (e.g., out of cellular coverage area, unavailability of radio data channel, and the like) have no access or guidance. Other problems with these paradigms include without limitation: (1) the delay in receiving and ingesting the weather and field information, (2) the delay in processing the same, (3) the delay in creating forecasts and recommendations based on the same, (4) the delay in getting that information back out to the field, and (5) the delay in then responding to a change in variables if, for example, the operator reports the road is dry rather than wet (such as might be the case if the storm unexpectedly tracks south and/or with virgo). When in the latter case, the operator enters or reports dry roads from the field, the systems typically have to first qualify and then repeat the above process, sometimes with delays of 20 minutes or more. The delay can prevent effective control of snow and ice accumulation on roadways and cause extreme danger to motorists.